Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark re­vealed the UNC’s in­ten­tion to chal­lenge the Whistle­blow­er Pro­tec­tion Bill in court.

Speak­ing in the Sen­ate on Tues­day night dur­ing a de­bate on the bill, Mark said, “The minute the Pres­i­dent signs off on the bill, the Op­po­si­tion would meet the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in a place he’s fa­mil­iar with. This bill is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, il­le­gal and in­valid and must be chal­lenged in the courts. I give you that un­der­tak­ing!” Mark said.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour had ear­li­er on Tues­day pi­lot­ed the an­ti-cor­rup­tion bill.

Ar­mour had as­sured the Op­po­si­tion that reg­u­la­tions for the bill would be sub­ject­ed to af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion with ac­tive Par­lia­ment de­bate. He said the pro­por­tion­al­i­ty of the bill was ev­i­dent in en­sur­ing con­trols by giv­ing pro­tec­tion to whistle­blow­ers.

Ar­mour al­so clar­i­fied the is­sue claimed by the Op­po­si­tion in a re­cent House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives de­bate on the bill con­cern­ing the Chief Par­lia­men­tary Coun­sel (CPC) ad­vis­ing the bill need­ed a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty.

But Mark dis­missed Ar­mour’s ex­pla­na­tion as the Op­po­si­tion main­tained its re­jec­tion of the bill.

He ques­tioned how it could be put in­to law where a per­son might be false­ly ac­cus­ing some­one of some­thing and the whistle­blow­er could be pro­tect­ed from civ­il, crim­i­nal or dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion. Mark said the bill re­quired at least a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage.

Mark said a PNM whistle­blow­er could set up some­one and “Your name jump­ing up out there! The Gov­ern­ment is us­ing Par­lia­ment to weaponise law. You can’t take the PNM whistle­blow­er to court but they can mash you up as this bill gives carte blanche cov­er­age to the whistle­blow­er at the ex­pense of peo­ple they’re anony­mous­ly re­port­ing on.”

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Tim Gopeesingh asked, “Will jour­nal­ists be pro­tect­ed un­der this law? Will the whistle­blow­er who gives them in­for­ma­tion be pro­tect­ed? We’ve seen me­dia hous­es be­ing searched af­ter pub­lish­ing cer­tain sto­ries, seen a Prime Min­is­ter go­ing to a me­dia house af­ter an an­nounc­er said some­thing against them.”

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira said it re­mains to be seen if the bill will be­come prac­tice or re­main ink on pa­per.

He called for an en­vi­ron­ment which changed the per­cep­tion of whistle­blow­ers be­ing seen as “snitch­es” and recog­nised as valu­able con­trib­u­tors to in­tegri­ty and pub­lic trust.

Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Lau­rence His­lop said the Op­po­si­tion’s re­jec­tion showed they were suf­fer­ing from “R(a)i-sing as one UNC MP saw it fit to vote with Gov­ern­ment, all of a sud­den he’s a pari­ah.” —Gail Alexan­der